这是E.H. Gombrich的The Story of Art的前三段(第三段的部分). 摘下来说不定能引
起一些版友的兴趣, 去找这本经典
来看看. 我自己辛苦码了这么多字就厚着脸皮m了
There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these
were men who took coloured earth
and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today some buy
their paints, and design posters
for hoardings; they did and do many other things. There is no harm in
calling all these activities art as long
as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in
different times and places. and as
long as we realize that Art with a capital A has no existence. For Art with
a capital A has come to be
something of bogey and a fetish. You may crush an artist by telling him that
what he has just done may be
quite good in its own way, only it is no 'Art'. And you may confound anyone
enjoying a picture by declaring
that what he liked in it was not the Art but something different.
Actually I do not think that there are many wrong reasons for liking a
statue or a picture. Someone may
like a landscape painting because it reminds him of home, or a portrait
because it reminds him of a friend.
There is nothing wrong with that. All of us, when we see a painting, are
bound to be reminded of a
hundred-and-one things which influence our likes and dislikes. As long as
these memories help us to enjoy
what we see, we need not worry. It is only when some irrelevant memory makes
us prejudiced, when we
instinctively turn away from a magnificent picture of an alpine scene
because we dislike climbing, that we
should search our mind for the reason for the aversion which spoils a
pleasure we might otherwise have
had. There are wrong reasons for disliking a work of art.
Most people like to see in pictures what they would also like to see in
reality. This is quite a natural
preference. We all like beauty in nature, and are grateful to the artists
who have preserved it in their works.
Nor would these artists themselves have rebuffed us for our taste. When the
great Flemish painter Rubens
made a drawing of his little boy, figure 1 he was surely proud of his good
looks. He wanted us, too, to
admire the child. But this bias for the pretty and engaging subject is apt
to become a stumbling-block if it
leads us to reject works which represent a less appealing subject. The great
German painter Albrecht Durer
certainly drew his mother, figure 2, with as much devotion and love as
Rubens felt for his chubby child. His
truthful study of careworn old age may give us a shock which makes us turn
away from it - and yet, if we
fight against our first repugnance we may be richly rewarded, for Durer's
drawing in its tremendous
sincerity is a great work. In fact, we shall soon discover that the beauty
of a picture does not really lie in the
beauty of its subject-matter.
Figure 1
Figure 2
